Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [146]
The X-wing took advantage of his sudden dodge by peeling off to starboard, a hard turn—an obvious attempt to set up for another head-to-head pass. But Wedge switched his comm unit over to a general broadcast frequency and said, “Exercise terminated.”
The voice of Garik “Face” Loran, onetime boy actor for the Empire and now New Republic flyer, came back. “But I’m not dead yet.”
“You’re protesting?”
“Not exactly. Just curious.”
The vista of the lunar surface and the maneuvering X-wing faded abruptly to blackness. Wedge reached back to open the access hatch, situated where the twin ion engines were in a real TIE interceptor, and climbed out into overhead light.
The room was a large one, crowded with tables, chairs, and simulator units. Most were narrower units, the better to conform to the cockpit interiors of the X-wing, Y-wing, and A-wing starfighters used by the New Republic, but a few were spherical, such as the one Wedge had just vacated. The room was heavily trafficked by pilots, many of them in the New Republic’s orange pilots’s jumpsuits, and technicians in more somber colors. Most of the pilots were clustered around the various simulator units, monitoring the practicing pilots’ efforts on overhead holo displays.
Across an aisle busy with human traffic, Face Loran dropped nimbly to the floor and looked curiously toward Wedge. Wedge saw a female pilot trainee glance at him, do a double take, then flutter her hand over her heart as she whispered into the ear of a confidant. Face, with his strikingly handsome features, intent green eyes, and somehow artfully mussed black hair, often had that effect on women. Wedge waved him over.
They were joined a moment later by two other pilots. Flight Officer Lara Notsil, a lightly built woman with downy blond hair, was possessed of a delicate beauty that belied her intensity and skill in starfighter combat. Captain Tycho Celchu, a fair-haired man with features that suggested he’d weathered a lot of turmoil in his life, spoke first. “Why’d you kill the sim, Commander?”
“We were here to test the youngsters’s new combined-unit tactic,” Wedge said. “As soon as you and Lara went out, it became just another X-wing versus TIE exercise. There’s plenty of value in those, of course, but that’s not what we came here for.” He fixed his attention on Face. “What was your opinion of the effectiveness of your tactic?”
Face shrugged; he didn’t look happy. “Nowhere near as effective as I’d hoped.”
“You were presuming that experienced enemies would be so thrown off by the novelty of what you were doing that they’d be easy kills?”
“Presuming? No, sir. Just hoping.”
“Lara, your thoughts?”
“Well, one exercise isn’t statistically significant,” she said. “So anything I had to say would be premature. Irrelevant. But I think the tactic worked as it was supposed to. I received a lot of protection from Face’s shields on both the incoming and out-bound legs of the run, in spite of the fact that you flushed me out pretty easily. I’d say it was effective.”
Tycho nodded. “I’d agree. But I think it’s a one-shot tactic. Usable only in paired head-to-head runs or when you have an X-wing/TIE pair going after a single target. It would be best used at the start of any engagement, then abandoned.”
“I’d say it’s worth further practice and analysis,” Wedge said. “Face, Lara, work up some automated exercises to give all the Wraiths the opportunity to play around with this.” He checked the chrono strapped to his wrist. “Though not now. We have about ten minutes to get to our briefing. Dismissed.”
The two younger pilots saluted and headed off into the stream of traffic.
Wedge called, “Hey.”
The two turned, Face curious, Lara looking guilty, as if wondering if she’d forgotten to salute before leaving.